Thursday 28^th June, 2012

I connect the exclamation “awesome” with my former Australian flatmate Zoe who used it quite often. I realised that this is normal for Australians. And indeed I have to say: “Australia is awesome!” Foremost I have seen a lot, thanks to my very competent and in-law travel organizer. The country and the countryside are very diverse and beside the huge cities of Melbourne and Sydney nearly deserted from humans. And huge is this country. To fly 5 hours one way and 4 hours back to see Petra for a long weekend is a bit questionable. But we missed a bit. Impressive was that we met quite often wild animals, more than we expected. And such a Hoppedihopp (my nickname for a kangaroo) is a very special animal. Also the birds deserve to be mentioned, especially their voices. The loud laughing Kookaburra is well known. Then there is also the bright bell or the carping child. How about a “whistle after a girl”-whistle? In the office we had an alarm sound if a ticket need immediate attention. During lunch we put this very loud to hear it also in the garden while eating. But such a stupid bird used the same tone (either by nature or learned) and so it happened that we went back to the office for nothing. Finally we changed the tone. Or when we stayed overnight on a caravan park where dogs were forbidden. Still on the way back to the camper there was a dog barking. When I reached the camper, I heard the dog barking from the tree. As far as I know, dogs cannot climb, but in northern Australia live barking owls!

Back to Sydney. The city is ideal for water sports, but this is not my thing. But I used the opportunity to do a bit more Tango. A good teacher (Federico) and a dance partner (Yin) were soon found. I had to get warm first as I was not doing a lot of Tango recently. But Federico is a good teacher and could always exactly tell what has to be corrected and Yin showed me a few milongas were we could train and use what we learned. And soon it was fun again. As Petra arrived in Sydney, she joined also the course. Maybe one day it will work with us two and Tango. And there was also the work. About half of it was normal work (programming). It worked quite well despite the distance as we had split the work well in our team and I could work independently. A video conference here in between helped us to keep the contact. The other half was customer service. That was the reason why I went to Sydney. In Zurich this part of the work is about 20%. In Sydney we are four who have to cover the night. One is always the main responsible for the customer service and another one supports him if there is sufficient work. The other two do their normal work or are off. At the weekend someone had to hold the line. The workload differed. There were few phone calls, just if there was something on in Asia. Most work was cleaning up what spilled over from the day what could not be completed in Zurich. Mostly it was about some changes on the customer installations or some problems to investigate. Sometimes this leads to outgoing calls if we need someone to do something so we see the problem live and are hopefully able to nail it down. Cool was that we were a team wildly assembled from different parts of the company. You get in closer contact to colleagues you normally not have that much to do with. No further details as there is following unwritten law: What happens in Sydney stays in Sydney. Lets see, maybe in two years we go again.

Saturday 28^th April, 2012

In November 2007 I visited the Blue Mountains National Park for the first time. Then all was dry and no waterfalls to see. Dominik and Konrad visited the park a few weeks ago. As everybody liked it, we went there again. Our first destination was Katoomba. Here we first bought a nice pick-nick. Then we went to the start of the hike. Along the Prince Henry Cliff Walk we walked at the top of the cliffs to the Katoomba Falls. For me the landscape looks quite different as I remember it then thanks to all the water everything looks much greener. A bit after the waterfall we had to leave the track then it was closed. So we had to follow the road until we could descend a few stairs to the Lady Darley Lookout. From here the track was open again. We continued to Echo Point and I realized that from here you may see the rock formation Three Sisters. A lot of tourists were here and wanted to enjoy the view. After we made a few pictures we descended to the Three Sisters. A wide path and a few chairs led down. Also here a few tourists were fighting with the stairs, but so bad it could not be yet. There are another 800 steps you can go down to the bottom track. As it was already noon we took a break at about two third of the stairs. We enjoyed the pick-nick on a bench and refreshed of the exertion. With new strength we continued descending, but the path does not lead to the very bottom of the valley. In the shadow if the many eucalyptus trees we walked towards the Scenic Railways Station. There we continued to explore the boardwalk through the trees and saw some birds we have not seen yet. One behaved very strange: it whistled and then twitched like it had been hit by electricity.

Here once coal was mined and now a few figures are showing how it was done. Then once again we realized that the Australians do not dispose old stuff. They put a sign, call it historical and make it to tourist attraction. Also a possibility and here they have sufficient space to do so. To get back to the car we had three options: walk up the stairs step by step, take a steep cable car or go by gondola. We chose option 2 and took the cable car. It was only late afternoon and Konrad would have liked to have a look over the countryside. So we drove to Mt. Wilson. As we learnt this is the name of a village and not of a mountain. The village was on the top, but it was surrounded by trees so we did not get a proper view over the valley. On the way back we discovered a road sign to a lookout. After a short hike we could look far over a valley of the Blue Mountain National Park. We saw also the sunset, but a bit hidden by clouds. In the dark we drove back to Sydney. I could drive the last kilometers as Konrad usually in the evening gets tired earlier than I. To finish the day I drove over the Harbour Bridge with its eight lanes. After I was glad to get out of the center as it is demanding to watch so much traffic.

Wednesday 25^th April, 2012

Today was ANZAC Day. On this holiday the Australians and the Kiwis remember the servicemen which lost their lives in the battle of Gallipoli in Turkey in the first world war. Early in the morning there is a parade in Sydney with the Australian army. I preferred to sleep a bit longer and to do something after lunch. Together with Konrad and Dominik I went to Manly. To get there we took the ferry connecting this quarter with the city center. First the path led us along the coast to Shelly Beach. Then we went uphill to a former army camp and after to the Sydney Harbour National Park. On this cliff path we had sometimes view to the sea. At North Head we could watch the sea and the other parts of the city on the other side of the Fjord. Back we took a more direct way. Back in Manly Dominik and Konrad went t-shirt shopping in the souvenir shops. As it got already dark at 6pm, we could see the lights of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House on the way back to the center. It is fascinating that there are that many areas of green around the center of Sydney.

Sunday 22^nd April, 2012

A bit before noon Konrad and I went to the city. Here are the Royal Botanic Gardens next to the many skyscrapers and historical buildings.

1788 there was the first farm in Australia on the park area. They constructed much even thou the land was not very fertile. Unfortunately the park degenerated during first world war and no new plants were collected. Only years later the park got improved. Today it offers a very good collection of Australian and tropical plants. Together with Konrad we made a long walk through the park. We enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere and watched the plants which were still blooming. For starch ourselves we left the park shortly and had lunch with view to the Opera House. After we surrounded the opera, but unfortunately the main stairs are currently redone. Back in the park we were looking for flying foxes, a kind of bats. A colony of flying foxes lives in the park and hangs in the trees during the day. It took quite a while until we found them. After a break in the park café we would have liked to further explore the park, but it started to rain. So we went home with the train.

Saturday 9^th June, 2012

We started today early after we spent the last evening in Sydney with the workmates of Konrad. Until this morning everything looked good with our luggage, but the last few things we had to push into Konrad's suitcase. As I brought the suitcase to the car, I realized that the zip was not holding at two places. So we started with the hope to be able to solve this problem at the airport. First we drove to the office of Open Systems to leave there the keys of the flat. After Yin, a friend from Tango, gave us a lift to the airport. Unfortunately there was no shop at the airport which would have solved our suitcase problem. Konrad opened the zip and tried to close it again and now it was holding. After I was caught at the security. Unintentionally I put my pocket knife from the big backpack to the hand luggage. The officer was so nice that I could go out again and so that I could send the pocket knife. As there was not a normal post office, I had to send it to the office of Open Systems and hope now that someone there can bring it home. As it was a present of my godfather I did not want to have it disposed. At the gate the plane was already waiting. “We are waiting for the engineer to give the plane free” were we told. But that did not happen and so we had to go to another gate were we boarded another plane. With a delay of more than an hour we started to Darwin. The flight was without problem and we marvelled at the Australian outback from above. After we checked-in at the accommodation we went to buy a new suitcase. I had warned Konrad already before that his suitcase will soon break completely. Now we did not want to have this risk again and immediately found a suitable suitcase on sale.

We went for sightseeing in Darwin after the put everything in the new suitcase and disposed the old one. There is not much in the city so we had soon seen it. But as there was a Greek festival this weekend we walked through the festival area and enjoyed a delicious Greek dinner. The sun was now setting and we walked back to the accommodation. Tomorrow we will start with the camper.